Using Characters to Determine and Understand Theme: A Three Day Unit

Lesson 1: What Can Characters Teach Us?

NVACS Focus Standard: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in
the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the
speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

Objective: I can explain how a character's response to challenges in a text impact the
theme of a story, drama, or poem.

Lesson is based on Real Friends by Shannon Hale. Real Friends is a graphic novel about the
difficulties of friendships in elementary school, and the importance of finding out not just who
you are, but who your real friends are as well.
***Graphic Novel will be read in its entirety as a read aloud prior to the lesson(s).
Materials: Reader’s Notebook, excerpt from Real Friends (pgs 109-114,187-201

Connection/Introduction: As you all know, I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. When I was a kid, I
read the books over and over again, and believe it or not, I learned a lot of things about being a
good person and a good friend from them. I learned that it was important to stand up for yourself
and others, and that it was okay to be smart, even if others teased you for it.
When reading, we want to make frequent connections. One of those connections is important
for us to grow as humans as we grow as readers, which is that text to self connection. By
making those text to self connections, we are about to think “What can this character teach
me?”
Teaching: Today I want to teach you that sometimes, you find people in life you look up to.
Maybe this person is a friend who doesn’t have much of their own, but is always willing to help a
friend in need. Maybe it’s someone that shows a lot of patience when you’d already be
frustrated and upset. These people we admire become role models, or examples, of how we
want to behave ourselves. Within our stories, we can look at the traits the characters show and
think about what those traits can teach us.
(I do)First, let’s look at pages 6-7 on the ELMO. Here, we see Shannon on her first day of
kindergarten. She is very scared and crying, but she still takes time to tell the little girl next to
her (Adrienne) “It’s okay. You’ll make friends.” What I think this shows is that Shannon is kind,
because she took the time to comfort someone else, even though she was scared as well.
(We do) So let’s try this again, together. Let’s look at pages 109-114, you have your own copies,
but I’ll put them on the board as well. How would you describe how Shannon is acting here?
Remember to focus on character traits. Here, with help as needed, students will see the
parallels between the first excerpt and this, where Shannon is kind despite being scared and
upset. What can Shannon’s actions here teach you? Students will identify the importance of
being kind to others.
(You do together) Now let’s look at something more complex. If you look at pages 187-201, we
see the moment where Jen decides The Group and Jenny aren’t who she wants to be around
anymore, and decides to ask Shannon if she can be her friend again. I want you to look at this
with your group and answer these questions (on board) How would you describe Shannon’s
actions here? And What can Shannon’s action’s here teach you? Pay special attention to
her interaction with Jenny, as it is a bit unexpected from what we know of Shannon. What can
we learn from this interaction? Don’t just look at the text, look at the pictures as well for clues
about how each character feels.
You can use some sentence stems for help, including: “_______________taught me that if
__________________, you should________________.” or “___________________ is acting
like ____________________, so I’m learning ______________________.”

Closure: Just as characters can teach us about ourselves, they can also allow us to look further
into the text to determine the theme. Based on what we know about Shannon and the outcome
of the story, what do you think a possible theme may be? **students turn and talk, share a few
answers*** Keep those ideas in mind as we move further into our short novel study.
Assessment: Answers to questions about text will be collected for a formative assessment and
to make adjustments to subsequent lessons as needed.

Lesson Two: Look Out for What Characters Teach Each Other
NVACS Focus Standard: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in
the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the
speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

Objective: I can explain how a character's response to challenges in a text impact the
theme of a story, drama, or poem.

Lesson is based on Real Friends by Shannon Hale. Real Friends is a graphic novel about the
difficulties of friendships in elementary school, and the importance of finding out not just who
you are, but who your real friends are as well.
***Graphic Novel will be read in its entirety as a read aloud prior to the lesson(s).
Materials: Reader’s Notebook, excerpt from Real Friends (pgs 150-158 178-186, 199)

Connection/Introduction: Yesterday, we looked at how characters can teach us lessons that

allow us to grow and make solid text to self connections. Now that we are experts at looking
how characters can change us, we can also look at how characters can teach each other. In
novels, this frequently happens with a minor character teaching the main character a lesson that
is relevant to the plot and theme.

Teaching: This is very similar to how we look at what a character is teaching us, but instead, we
look at what they’re teaching the main character instead. In graphic novels, we use not only the
text to do this, but also study the images created by the illustrator to get a sense of what the
characters are doing/saying/feeling. Often times, what the main character learns is restated out
loud to convey the theme, but as we get older, we have to rely more on inferences to figure this
out. We see two major uses of this in Real Friends. The first can be found on pages 150-158,
and we’ll look at this together to see how this works in a graphic novel that relays these in more
subtle ways. On page 150, we see the beginning of Shannon’s friendship with Zara and
Veronica. Zara and Veronica are sixth graders who become friends with Shannon. What I find
most important in this, though, is what we see on page 157. Shannon, who is religious, prays
her thanks for her new friends, and promises she won’t say mean things about another person
again. We see her the next day with the two girls, where she says they are nice to everyone, a
“new kind of popular”. If we fast forward to page 199, we see this reflected in Shannon’s new
attitude and new group of friends. Looking at page 199, what do you think the lesson is that
Shannon learns? Students should respond that she learns that there is a better way to be
popular, by being known for being nice.
Shannon learns from these two girls that friendship isn’t being mean, or rude, or spreading
rumors. It’s being kind to those around you. We know this works best with Shannon’s
personality, why? Shannon is a kind person.
Now, as a group, I want to look at the passages from pages 178-186. In much of the story,
Shannon’s older sister Wendy is compared to a bear due to her often mean behavior. However,
here we learn a lot about Wendy and why she is that way. Read the passage with your group
and discuss What is the lesson being learned here, and who is teaching it? Shannon’s
mom teaches her about Wendy’s past trouble making friends and how she was bullied. They’re
not so different after all.
This lesson isn’t all laid out in words for us, so what did we use to figure this out? The pictures
tell the story.
How can we connect this to what we learned about Shannon yesterday? She learns that it’s
important to be kind to others, because you don’t know what they have going on in their lives.

Closure:This, along with looking at what a character teaches us, can be helpful to how we look
at the message, or theme of the story, but they aren’t the only parts that make it helpful. We
also have to look at other factors, such as how the character uses those lessons they’ve
learned, and how they grow and change over the story.

Assessment:Formative assessment during student discussion and again during reading

conferences with independent reading books to see how student is applying lesson knowledge
across texts.

Lesson Three: Character Change Can Reveal Lessons

NVACS Focus Standard: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in
the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the
speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
Objective: I can explain how a character's response to challenges in a text impact the
theme of a story, drama, or poem.

Lesson is based on Real Friends by Shannon Hale. Real Friends is a graphic novel about the
difficulties of friendships in elementary school, and the importance of finding out not just who
you are, but who your real friends are as well.
***Graphic Novel will be read in its entirety as a read aloud prior to the lesson(s).
Materials: Reader’s Notebook, Real Friends, Independent reading book (that they’ve finished
this year)
Connection/Introduction: This week, we’ve learned a lot about characters and how their choices
and actions can influence other characters and ourselves. We’ve seen how Shannon took her
personality traits and used them to become stronger, showing us that kindness prevails, but that
it’s okay to not forgive a bully right away. We’ve also seen Shannon learn some valuable
lessons, like being kind to others, even when it seems really hard. Today, we’re going to see
how that growth and change can help us figure out what lesson, message, or theme, the author
is trying to tell us.

Teaching: When a character begins to change, they often start to reveal new things about
themselves that we hadn’t seen before. For example, the more issues Shannon has with Jenny
and The Group, the more her anxiety plays out by counting repetitively. Then, as she learns
what it means to be a good friend, and her anxiety lessons, we see those habits drift away. Can
we identify other ways that Shannon changed over the course of the book? Answers
will/should vary. Answer I’d like to emphasize is that she becomes braver by standing up to her
fake friends and not allowing them to hurt her anymore, and recognizing that you can move on
from bullying, but that it’s okay to not be their friend after. As Shannon changes, she starts to
realize what makes a good friend: being nice and encouraging each other. Zara and Veronica
show her that being popular isn’t about scaring people into being your friend, it’s being kind to
those around you, regardless of who they are.
We can use this anchor chart to help us in our thinking as we study the novel (or your own
novel) from beginning to end.

At the At the end….

beginning…

So….
-
-
Let’s fill
this out
together
as a
class for
Real Friends. (Done whole group)
Closing: Now it isn’t enough to practice this on one novel and assume that we are confident in
our skills, we have to be able to apply this to more than one area. Today, our work will be
focused on applying the skills we’ve learned over the last three days to an independent reading
book you’ve finished this year. You will each fill out your own anchor chart that corresponds with
your book. I will be working around from group to group to assist.

Assessment: Students turn in completed anchor chart of personal novel to assess ability to
apply knowledge to other texts.

Lesson Plans Adapted from The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo